CURLMOPT_QUICK_EXIT(3)

💅 CURLMOPT_QUICK_EXIT — girl, just leave already 🏃‍♀️💨

okay so bestie, this is a page out of the Library Functions Manual and it's about one very specific little multi-handle option. real niche. real useful. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

CURLOPT_QUICK_EXIT — literally just lets libcurl dip out fast 🏃‍♀️ (yes, the manpage's NAME section says CURLOPT_QUICK_EXIT and I'm not gonna gaslight you by "fixing" it — that's what's written, so that's what you get 💖)

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <curl/curl.h>

CURLMcode curl_multi_setopt(CURLM *handle, CURLMOPT_QUICK_EXIT,
                            long value);

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So you pass a long in as the parameter, right? If that long is 1L, here's the vibe: when libcurl is recovering from a timeout, it's supposed to do all these lengthy cleanups whose whole personality is "we must avoid every kind of leak (threads, etc.)". But with 1L, it skips all that. Because — and this is the whole point — your caller program is about to call exit() anyway. like. it's over. why are we tidying the apartment when the building's getting demolished 😭

This gets you a swift termination after, say, a DNS timeout — by canceling and/or forgetting about a resolver thread. The trade-off? A possible (though short-lived) leak of associated resources. so yeah, tiny mess, but only for a sec 🫶

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🎀 DEFAULT 🎀

20.

that's what the page says, bestie. I'm not gonna editorialize about it. 20. periodt 💅

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🌈 PROTOCOLS 🌈

This functionality affects all supported protocols. every single one. no gatekeeping 👑

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🍓 EXAMPLE 🍓

int main(void)
{
  CURLM *m = curl_multi_init();
  /* do not join threads when cleaning up this multi handle */
  curl_multi_setopt(m, CURLMOPT_QUICK_EXIT, 1L);
}

see that comment? /* do not join threads when cleaning up this multi handle */ — that's the whole mood. no thread-joining today, we got places to be 💨

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⭐ AVAILABILITY ⭐

Added in curl 8.20.0. if you're on anything older, this option simply does not exist for you, sorry babe 🙈

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💜 RETURN VALUE 💜

curl_multi_setopt(3) returns a CURLMcode telling you success or error.

• CURLM_OK (0) — everything was OK. we ate. 💅
• non-zero — an error happened 😭

for the full lore on the error codes, see libcurl-errors(3).

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• CURLOPT_QUICK_EXIT(3)

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okay that's the whole page, you're basically an expert now 🌟 and for the receipts: this was written for libcurl, dated 2026-10-25, and the manual page is CURLMOPT_QUICK_EXIT(3) — same as when we started, but 100% more fun. byeee 🎀💖🔥